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From the get-go, the 2D animated, sci-fi, steampunk adventure “April and the Extraordinary World” hurls the viewer into an eye-popping world that never happened.

The crazily inventive story begins in the late 19th century when the French Emperor Napoleon III forces a scientist to invent a secret serum that will turn lab monkeys into invincible super-soldiers. When that big scheme quite literally blows up in Napoleon’s face, the path of European history is forever altered and skewed.

By the early 20th century during the ‘30s and ‘40s, Paris is a sooty, pollution-ridden metropolis — with two matching Eiffel Towers — that runs on steam engines and burning charcoal.

Enter the plucky young girl April (voice of Marion Cotillard) and her talking cat Darwin (voice of Philippe Katerine). Yes, a talking cat. April’s parents were scientists who were arrested by the government police and hauled off with Tesla and the rest. The girl and her cat soon join forces with her long-lost grandfather, who’s been in hiding, and then things get truly bizarre.

“April and the Extraordinary World,” which is being shown this weekend by The Tallahassee Film Society at All Saints Cinema, is a visual knockout for any serious animation fan, even if the plot gets very, very far-fetched by the end. Let’s just say you can have one chatty cat in a movie but you should draw the line at talking dragon-lizards. The film was co-directed by Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci, who adapted it for the screen from a graphic novel by Jacques Tardi. It’s all as mind-blowing as it is exhausting.

If “April” whets your appetite for more daring animation that does not have Disney or DreamWorks’ names attached, head back to All Saints when the Florida Animation Festival kicks off at 7 p.m. Thursday with the trippy, folk-art fever dream “Gravity War Everywhere Back Then” in All Saints Cinema.

The festival rolls on with screenings of international and Florida State-made short films June 17-19. Catch up on Oscar-nominated shorts June 17-19. Bring the kids along to see a collection of family-friendly shorts from around the world on June 18 and 19. The Oscar-nominated, feature-length “Song of the Sea” (2014), which is aimed at younger viewers, is being shown on June 18.

Leave the young’uns with a baby-sitter when “Spike & Mike’s Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation” hits the screen at All Saints on June 17 and 18. You must 18 or older to attend.